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Surprise, Surprise

After a brief hiatus, used in part to contemplate the richness that is federal procurement, Government Inc. returns.

Think of today's item in the context of the immortal words of Gomer Pyle: Su-prise, su-prise, su-prise.

It turns out that several intelligence agencies are going to withhold unclassified information about their arrangements with government contractors from a new government database called USAspending.gov

The reason, according to a story by Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News: "operational security issues."

Secrecy News is a blog and e-mail newsletter published by the Federation of American Scientists. It obtains and publishes myriad government documents that are not readily available to the public.

Among the documents Aftergood relies on is a Dec. 7 memo from Pentagon official Shay D. Assad to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial Agency and others.

"I appreciate your concerns that reporting these actions to the publicly accessible website could provide unacceptable risk of insight to your individual missions and budgets," Assad, the director of defense procurement, wrote in the memo.

Aftergood notes that the "new waiver, which was first reported by Daniel G. Dupont in InsideDefense.com, applies to unclassified contract data for FY 2007 and 2008, and must be renewed each year thereafter."

By the way, the motto of the government's new database: "Where Americans Can See Where Their Money Goes."